jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

My dev team is about to start a from-scratch effort to replace an existing Flash-based web site with one that uses HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. I've read many comments on the relative merits of jQuery vs Dojo, and they seem to boil down to two basic themes:

a) jQuery is overwhelming more popular than all other JS libraries/toolkits combined
b) Dojo is better suited for industrial strength web apps than jQuery.

Given (b) above it would seem that Dojo would be a better choice for our new web app. However, despite a steady stream of Dojo updates over the past year, some members of my team argue that interest in Dojo is waning; some signs of this include:

1) Flatline for Dojo in Google trends, even before discounting overlap with other uses of the word "Dojo"; this is particularly damning given the steady growth of jQuery.
2) No new Dojo books in almost 4 years
3) Dojocampus.org doesn't appear to have been updated in over 2 years
4) Two of the three companies listed on Dojocampus.org as offering "professional Dojo support" make no mention of Dojo on their respective web sites (Sitepen is the loan holdout).
5) Even Sitepen's "Why Dojo?" page was last updated in 2009, except for a comment that the page is "a bit dated".

All this would seem to hint that Dojo is slowly dying on the vine, making it a tough sell vs jQuery. Can anyone here speak to the long-term viability of Dojo?

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

1. I like jQuery for quick, simple actions on basic to medium complexity web sites. I understand that dojo can be used in a similar manner, but I've not taken the time to do that.

2. I like dojo due to the depth of its capabilities, the powerful widgets available, the overall design/implementation, and the longevity and commitment of many of its developers (as well as the user community). The flexibility and completeness of its various grid and other widgets, as well as its deferred, dom manipulation, etc. tools make it a great choice for sites that deal with "data".

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

As far as long-term viability, we're committed to see Dojo through
indefinitely. Perhaps some of the presentations at
http://www.slideshare.net/sitepen are useful also? Also, projects like
http://dgrid.io/ show off some of the new modules and features we've
been busily creating.

Dojo Campus is basically dead. Instead we've put the effort into the
Dojo docs. For example, all 55 tutorials at
http://dojotoolkit.org/documentation/ were written within the past year.

Most book authors that I've talked to are waiting for version 2.0 before
updating their books. If I had the time, I'd consider writing a new Dojo
book, but I don't unfortunately.

We (SitePen) haven't updated the Why Dojo post because we don't think
it's that interesting of a question that it needs a regular update. If
there's strong value in having that post updated regularly, we're happy
to do so.

As far as slowly dying on the vine, I think Dojo is in a better position
than it was a year ago. We had some growing pains and architectural
challenges that we needed to overcome. In the past year, we've made some
major changes (the AMD refactor), added the tutorials, seen a
significant rise in adoption (this is based on apps I've seen from
companies), and won a couple of awards along the way.

We as a project have a lot of work to do to get our 1.8 and 2.0 releases
out the door and continue to improve the project as a whole. I think
it's an exciting time to start using Dojo, and while we may never be the
#1 toolkit from a popularity perspective, we will be a thriving a viable
concern for many years to come.

Regards,
- -Dylan (co-founder of Dojo)

on 4/30/12 7:41 PM (GMT-07:00) Mogul Buster said the following:

> My dev team is about to start a from-scratch effort to replace an
> existing Flash-based web site with one that uses
> HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. I've read many comments on the relative
> merits of jQuery vs Dojo, and they seem to boil down to two basic
> themes:
>
> a) jQuery is overwhelming more popular than all other JS
> libraries/toolkits combined b) Dojo is better suited for industrial
> strength web apps than jQuery.
>
> Given (b) above it would seem that Dojo would be a better choice for
> our new web app. However, despite a steady stream of Dojo updates
> over the past year, some members of my team argue that interest in
> Dojo is waning; some signs of this include:
>
> 1) Flatline for Dojo in Google trends, even before discounting
> overlap with other uses of the word "Dojo"; this is particularly
> damning given the steady growth of jQuery. 2) No new Dojo books in
> almost 4 years 3) Dojocampus.org doesn't appear to have been updated
> in over 2 years 4) Two of the three companies listed on
> Dojocampus.org as offering "professional Dojo support" make no
> mention of Dojo on their respective web sites (Sitepen is the loan
> holdout). 5) Even Sitepen's "Why Dojo?" page was last updated in
> 2009, except for a comment that the page is "a bit dated".
>
> All this would seem to hint that Dojo is slowly dying on the vine,
> making it a tough sell vs jQuery. Can anyone here speak to the
> long-term viability of Dojo?
>
>
> -- View this message in context:
> http://dojo-toolkit.33424.n3.nabble.com/jQuery-and-the-long-term-viability-of-Dojo-tp3952249.html>
>

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

To add my two pence, I am increasingly seeing signs that Dojo, while far from as ubiquitous as jQuery is continuing to make progress in the enterprise application space.

I counter the mention of Google trends with the following link: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/js-dojo/all/all. While "flatline" of a small but significant market share may be one way of looking at it, you could also interpret it as a strong and stable upward trend, and this only represents public facing applications where a fair amount of Dojo use is in non-published enterprise applications.

I agree with Dylan in that the move to AMD was "painful", but it is now something that Dojo has done and other libraries and toolkits are following suit with to various degrees of success. AMD is very much "Dojo-esque" and show the true strength of a "doing the right thing" in that Dojo has embraced a very technology that means that you don't (and likely won't) ever use a single toolkit for everything.

While being simplistic, jQuery is for building websites and Dojo is for building enterprise applications.

As far as long-term viability, we're committed to see Dojo through
indefinitely. Perhaps some of the presentations athttp://www.slideshare.net/sitepen are useful also? Also, projects likehttp://dgrid.io/ show off some of the new modules and features we've
been busily creating.

Most book authors that I've talked to are waiting for version 2.0 before
updating their books. If I had the time, I'd consider writing a new Dojo
book, but I don't unfortunately.

We (SitePen) haven't updated the Why Dojo post because we don't think
it's that interesting of a question that it needs a regular update. If
there's strong value in having that post updated regularly, we're happy
to do so.

As far as slowly dying on the vine, I think Dojo is in a better position
than it was a year ago. We had some growing pains and architectural
challenges that we needed to overcome. In the past year, we've made some
major changes (the AMD refactor), added the tutorials, seen a
significant rise in adoption (this is based on apps I've seen from
companies), and won a couple of awards along the way.

We as a project have a lot of work to do to get our 1.8 and 2.0 releases
out the door and continue to improve the project as a whole. I think
it's an exciting time to start using Dojo, and while we may never be the
#1 toolkit from a popularity perspective, we will be a thriving a viable
concern for many years to come.

Regards,
- -Dylan (co-founder of Dojo)

on 4/30/12 7:41 PM (GMT-07:00) Mogul Buster said the following:

> My dev team is about to start a from-scratch effort to replace an
> existing Flash-based web site with one that uses
> HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. I've read many comments on the relative
> merits of jQuery vs Dojo, and they seem to boil down to two basic
> themes:
>
> a) jQuery is overwhelming more popular than all other JS
> libraries/toolkits combined b) Dojo is better suited for industrial
> strength web apps than jQuery.
>
> Given (b) above it would seem that Dojo would be a better choice for
> our new web app. However, despite a steady stream of Dojo updates
> over the past year, some members of my team argue that interest in
> Dojo is waning; some signs of this include:
>
> 1) Flatline for Dojo in Google trends, even before discounting
> overlap with other uses of the word "Dojo"; this is particularly
> damning given the steady growth of jQuery. 2) No new Dojo books in
> almost 4 years 3) Dojocampus.org doesn't appear to have been updated
> in over 2 years 4) Two of the three companies listed on
> Dojocampus.org as offering "professional Dojo support" make no
> mention of Dojo on their respective web sites (Sitepen is the loan
> holdout). 5) Even Sitepen's "Why Dojo?" page was last updated in
> 2009, except for a comment that the page is "a bit dated".
>
> All this would seem to hint that Dojo is slowly dying on the vine,
> making it a tough sell vs jQuery. Can anyone here speak to the
> long-term viability of Dojo?
>
>
> -- View this message in context:
> http://dojo-toolkit.33424.n3.nabble.com/jQuery-and-the-long-term-viability-of-Dojo-tp3952249.html
>
>
Sent from the Dojo Toolkit mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> ________________________________________________________ Dojotoolkit:
> http://dojotoolkit.org Reference Guide:
> http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide API Documentation:
> http://dojotoolkit.org/api Tutorials:
> http://dojotoolkit.org/documentation
>
> [hidden email]
> http://mail.dojotoolkit.org/mailman/listinfo/dojo-interest

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

My last project was done with jquery which is a good library to help you with html manipulation. But the quality of the plugins are not at the same standard as say widgets from dojo or say Ext. Also jquery is a library and not a framework. It requires you to mix and match between a whole plentora of other small projects, which many will be in 0.x beta state in order to get a full stack of libraries. Examples are knockout, requirejs, and a pile of 3rd party plugins whose longevity is just a hunch.

Add to this the need for building solutions which in the case of jquery needs to be found outside of the library but with dojo is found within the framework, testing framework which also needs to be supplied and with dojo is included. The choice of dojo instead of jquery for my next project is clear. Jquery is none the less a great tool for making websites, not applications in my book.

Then since dojo is a framework it helps you out (or sincerely suggests) the use of good practice patterns since it has this functionality built in. What I am especially fond of is e.g. Deferreds (the pattern is Promises if I am not mistaken), allowing almost everything to be made async. Another nice feature/pattern, is aspect oriented programming, and others include publish/subscribe, watchers, set/get etc, and of course classful programming (which of course can be found elsewhere as well but not really in jquery). And you can of course use requirejs to get AMD loading in jquery but I doubt that existing plugins are all written as packages with AMD modules, meaning you have to rewrite a lot to get the huge benefit of AMD, and that meaning that you can not upgrade without rewrite, creating costs.

So it not as easy as comparing two libraries, but a library and all the possible stacks of other libraries you add to that one, to a framework.

Dojo is more to be compared with other frameworks such as Ext. But personally I found the inflexibility and the programming pattern used in Ext very limiting and full of anti patterns such as all objects being god objects and not being able to mix match between html and widgets freely which I felt I needed in my project.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Thanks for the responses, but they don’t really answer my question, which concerned the long-term prospects of Dojo. Right now there seem to be mixed signals -- on the one hand, a relatively steady stream of recent releases and an aggressive roadmap for another release this year show that Dojo is continuing to evolve; on the other hand, my OP enumerated several items that seem to hint that Dojo is losing community support.

From a strictly what-can-it-do-now standpoint, I’m sold on Dojo as a better solution for industrial-strength apps than jQuery. What I’m really interested in hearing are comments on whether Dojo can flourish and grow as a niche player in a world that is increasingly dominated by jQuery.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

It's like asking Ferrari to promise that their car will become the number 1 most sold car in the world to outsell Toyota and Honda.

Well, sorry, that's not going to happen, but that's not a comment on the quality of Ferrari, most people simply can't afford it.

Most people use jQuery, because that's all they need, a simple website where you include jQuery in each page, do some dom manipulation, have a picture slider and a few animations.

That does that job for that requirement and they are happy, they see no reason to learn something that is going to give them more, or learn OO
patterns.

Of course you can do with Dojo anything that you can with jQuery. I have used both, and even for simple page dom manipulation I now use dojo. Whatever you can do with jQuery, I can do with Dojo. But, you can't do with jQuery a complex one page web app that can go over 10mb of client side code. Well, theoretically you could, but smart people don't even attempt that, because they know what they'll run into.

So, if you never plan to do any complex applications in your life, then jQuery will suffice you.

Dojo on the other hand is not for the faint of heart, I'll give you that. A big minus, in my opinion has been two major refactoring (0.9 and 1.7) which has caused some people to consider their investment.

However, I would say that the present 1.7 (and upcoming 2.0) model are well grounded models that will endure for a long
time.

Many big companies (including where I work) have invested a lot to use Dojo, and there's a reason for that. The class structure of the widget system is great for building large apps and writing your own widgets.

What you have to acknowledge about Dojo is that they seek to employ the best industry standards and are always looking at what others are doing best to incorporate into Dojo.

So in closing, let me say that you may not get the answer you're looking for, but you simply need to consider your requirements and what is available, and if you learn Dojo, you won't be sorry you did.

Thanks for the responses, but they don’t really answer my question, whichconcerned the long-term prospects of Dojo. Right now there seem to be mixedsignals -- on the one hand, a relatively steady stream of recent releasesand an aggressive roadmap for another release this year show that Dojo iscontinuing to evolve; on the other hand, my OP enumerated several items thatseem to hint that Dojo is losing community support.

From a strictly what-can-it-do-now standpoint, I’m sold on Dojo as a bettersolution for industrial-strength apps than jQuery. What I’m reallyinterested in hearing are comments on whether Dojo can flourish and grow asa niche player in a world that is increasingly dominated by jQuery.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Well, the only way to be sure is to wait a couple of years, build a time machine and make the right choice.

Predicting the future is generally considered to be quite hard.

I think that Dylan did point out quite a number of factors that show that we are on a very good trajectory. I think that the main problem here is that you are comparing Dojo to jQuery, which doesn't really offer the same kind of features. a Web-app framework will by necessity be smaller in adoption, and have a slower increasing adoption rate than a web-page framework.

Thanks for the responses, but they don’t really answer my question, which
concerned the long-term prospects of Dojo. Right now there seem to be mixed
signals -- on the one hand, a relatively steady stream of recent releases
and an aggressive roadmap for another release this year show that Dojo is
continuing to evolve; on the other hand, my OP enumerated several items that
seem to hint that Dojo is losing community support.

From a strictly what-can-it-do-now standpoint, I’m sold on Dojo as a better
solution for industrial-strength apps than jQuery. What I’m really
interested in hearing are comments on whether Dojo can flourish and grow as
a niche player in a world that is increasingly dominated by jQuery.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Well, no one can predict the future, we can only tell you what we are
doing that is within our power to deliver the best possible outcome.

With the support and adoption of Dojo by major enterprises like IBM,
Cisco, ADP, Orange, Thomson Reuters, and many others, many companies
that have made strategic investments in Dojo that will not be going away
any time soon. That's the best sign I have to offer that Dojo has
sustainable traction.

Regards,
- -Dylan

on 5/1/12 7:16 PM (GMT-07:00) Mogul Buster said the following:

> Thanks for the responses, but they don’t really answer my question,
> which concerned the long-term prospects of Dojo. Right now there
> seem to be mixed signals -- on the one hand, a relatively steady
> stream of recent releases and an aggressive roadmap for another
> release this year show that Dojo is continuing to evolve; on the
> other hand, my OP enumerated several items that seem to hint that
> Dojo is losing community support.
>
> From a strictly what-can-it-do-now standpoint, I’m sold on Dojo as a
> better solution for industrial-strength apps than jQuery. What I’m
> really interested in hearing are comments on whether Dojo can
> flourish and grow as a niche player in a world that is increasingly
> dominated by jQuery.
>
>
> -- View this message in context:
> http://dojo-toolkit.33424.n3.nabble.com/jQuery-and-the-long-term-viability-of-Dojo-tp3952249p3954173.html>
>

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

One of the other considerations I haven't seen mentioned in this thread, especially in the commercial space, especially if you are considering derivative commercial software is the licensing aspects. Because JQuery relies upon a significant amount of 3rd party additives, all licensed in various ways, to provide a full features framework, you could find yourself unintentionally encumbered with restrictive licensing... IIRC JQuery is MIT and/or GPL, plus you would want to evaluate the licensing of anything else you use on top of JQuery. Dojo is licensed in a way that is extremely commercially friendly, plus you get a far wider set of base code which means you may need less 3rd party libraries.

I agree with the others, the time machine is out of order at the moment, so the long term viability is difficult to predict.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

I think it is a fair question from a product manager to think about using on a long-term framework for developping a new web application.

It is very hard to guess what the future will be in the web space as the market evolves at such a pace that it makes difficult to keep up for a company wanted to launch a new service or product. I would say it should be part of your business model to plan contingency in your product release strategy as you may need to shift radically the approach or the underlying framework (in that sense Dojo evolved by "waves" and the latter is the bigger - to me, leading to a very challenging time when you have to re-code or adapt your existing code to the new ways of programming). In the software architecture space there is rarely a black or white choice, you adapt it based on your business model and strategy.

Having said that and to answer your question, JQuery can't keep up with a professional (monetized) programming approach delivering web applications and not *just* web sites/pages with an enhanced end-user experience. They do not address the same needs neither have the same capabilities.

Dojo is more building blocks orientated for addressing UIs requirements (widgets), data handling & management at the front-end level, the whole capabilities out of the box - aligned in terms of versioning and release strategy. It is not the case with JQuery.

In my opinion, there is no competition between JQuery and Dojo and no one will take over the other, their market positioning is much different.

Anyway and whatever you are going to retain, you will have to upgrade within the next 24 months your applications if you want to support the latest version of Chrome, Opera, etc. I make the choice to upgrade my whole set of framework at one time (Dojo) instead of taking care of the integration and versioning of the different librairies (JQuery). I find it easier to manage and secure my delivery.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

After a hard-fought evaluation to decide between Dojo and jQuery, we have decided to go forward with Dojo. Many thanks to all who posted, particularly Dylan, whose authoritative comments on the future of Dojo helped defuse concerns that Dojo was not long for this world.

Ultimately what won the day for Dojo was the promise that it provides a consistent framework that would not be found in a collection of jQuery plugins. jQuery's overwhelming popularity certainly complicated the decision, but there were also ancillary issues regarding Dojo (including those mentioned in my original post) that made Dojo a tougher sell than it needed to be.

What struck me most when we first began to grapple with the jQuery or Dojo question was that there wasn’t a single one-stop source that made it clear why Dojo is a good alternative to jQuery. Instead, we were forced to cobble together the case for Dojo from miscellaneous jQuery-vs-Dojo posts scattered across the web and info gleaned from disjointed locations on the Dojo and SitePen web sites.

If the Dojo team is really interested in encouraging web developers to adopt Dojo, it needs to do a better job of explaining its advantages. One suggestion on how to get this message across would be to prominently display a “Why Dojo?” link on the Dojo home page; the associated “Why Dojo?” page would include the following topics:

1) Discuss what Dojo brings to the table. Make your points clearly and concisely, and let readers drill down for the supporting details. This should be like a sales brochure, so leave the download, setup, and implementation details (which forms the bulk of SitePen’s “Why Dojo?” page) to the Dojo documentation.

2) Don’t be afraid to mention the elephant in the room. jQuery vs Dojo posts are tucked away on various developer sites all over the web, but there needs to be something official from the Dojo team itself that is easy to find and explicitly states – again, clearly and concisely -- why developers should consider a niche player like Dojo over the vastly more popular jQuery.

3) Address the future of Dojo. Articulate the ways in which Dojo is evolving and, per some of the responses in this post, why it is a viable long-term solution. A link to the roadmap would also be welcome.

Once this info is in place, it’s vitally important that it be kept up-to-date. The web development landscape is rapidly evolving, and anything that hasn’t been updated in the past few months is suspect. As noted in my OP, the current SitePen “Why Dojo” page hasn’t changed since Oct 2009, and the first paragraph states that its content is “a bit dated”. That’s hardly the stuff to inspire confidence in anyone looking for a cutting-edge JavaScript framework.

Another suggestion would be to take down the dojocampus web site and redirect links to it back to dojotoolkit.org. As one of the few sites dedicated to Dojo, the fact that this moribund site hasn’t been updated in over 2 years just flat-out looks bad.

Currently it’s far too easy for harried developers to point to jQuery’s overwhelming popularity as an excuse for avoiding the hard work of evaluating what may be more appropriate alternatives. In fact, I was ready to go down that path myself until a colleague persuaded me to take a closer look at Dojo. While it’s far too early to know whether we have made the right choice in going with Dojo, at least we’re giving it a try. How many developers will never even consider Dojo because they couldn’t easily find out why they should bother?

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

I have been driving the Open Web strategy at Research In Motion
(BlackBerry) for the past 2 years and i agree that more can be done
to promote Dojo Vs. other frameworks. In that role, i have been
focused more on Mobile, and so SenchaTouch and jQueryMobile have
played an important part and come to mind first for most developers.

But i have always kept a warm place for Dojo because it's simply a
fantastic framework, and those who use it typically swear by it and
are better developers because of it. It's not as popular as jQuery
for instance, but when a project uses Dojo, it's much more integral
to the application's architecture. It's also a hands-down winner for
enterprise class web projects/products as far as i am concerned
(although i know some at Microsoft would disagree since they picked
jQuery). My IBM heritage and early experience with Dojo certainly
play a part in that assessment.

I for one have used it in a number of projects since v0.4 and will
continue to use it (i have done mostly large scale enterprise apps
where i believe Dojo is imply unbeatable). But the long tail of site
and app development completely belongs to jQuery and Sencha as of
right now. I am not sure Dojo should attack this, but that's for
another fire-side chat.

Clearly though:
- Dojo is absolutely a very strong end to end framework with broad
platform support, great features, and a very complete widget set.
- Dojo sports a very flexible programming model that adapts to lots
of dynamic/static requirements for complex web apps
- Dojo is backed by some of the largest enterprise players in the
world today. Billions of dollars in products and services depend on Dojo today.
- Dojo has a strong and vibrant community to help, as you have witnessed.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Excellent suggestions, I've added them to my notes for what to work on
with Dojo after we get the 1.8 release out the door.

Regards,
- -Dylan

on 7/25/12 12:36 PM (GMT-07:00) APWalker said the following:

> After a hard-fought evaluation to decide between Dojo and jQuery, we
> have decided to go forward with Dojo. Many thanks to all who posted,
> particularly Dylan, whose authoritative comments on the future of
> Dojo helped defuse concerns that Dojo was not long for this world.
>
> Ultimately what won the day for Dojo was the promise that it provides
> a consistent framework that would not be found in a collection of
> jQuery plugins. jQuery's overwhelming popularity certainly
> complicated the decision, but there were also ancillary issues
> regarding Dojo (including those mentioned in my original post) that
> made Dojo a tougher sell than it needed to be.
>
> What struck me most when we first began to grapple with the jQuery or
> Dojo question was that there wasn’t a single one-stop source that
> made it clear why Dojo is a good alternative to jQuery. Instead, we
> were forced to cobble together the case for Dojo from miscellaneous
> jQuery-vs-Dojo posts scattered across the web and info gleaned from
> disjointed locations on the Dojo and SitePen web sites.
>
> If the Dojo team is really interested in encouraging web developers
> to adopt Dojo, it needs to do a better job of explaining its
> advantages. One suggestion on how to get this message across would be
> to prominently display a “Why Dojo?” link on the Dojo home page; the
> associated “Why Dojo?” page would include the following topics:
>
> 1) Discuss what Dojo brings to the table. Make your points clearly
> and concisely, and let readers drill down for the supporting details.
> This should be like a sales brochure, so leave the download, setup,
> and implementation details (which forms the bulk of SitePen’s “Why
> Dojo?” page) to the Dojo documentation.
>
> 2) Don’t be afraid to mention the elephant in the room. jQuery vs
> Dojo posts are tucked away on various developer sites all over the
> web, but there needs to be something official from the Dojo team
> itself that is easy to find and explicitly states – again, clearly
> and concisely -- why developers should consider a niche player like
> Dojo over the vastly more popular jQuery.
>
> 3) Address the future of Dojo. Articulate the ways in which Dojo is
> evolving and, per some of the responses in this post, why it is a
> viable long-term solution. A link to the roadmap would also be
> welcome.
>
> Once this info is in place, it’s vitally important that it be kept
> up-to-date. The web development landscape is rapidly evolving, and
> anything that hasn’t been updated in the past few months is suspect.
> As noted in my OP, the current SitePen “Why Dojo” page hasn’t changed
> since Oct 2009, and the first paragraph states that its content is “a
> bit dated”. That’s hardly the stuff to inspire confidence in anyone
> looking for a cutting-edge JavaScript framework.
>
> Another suggestion would be to take down the dojocampus web site and
> redirect links to it back to dojotoolkit.org. As one of the few
> sites dedicated to Dojo, the fact that this moribund site hasn’t been
> updated in over 2 years just flat-out looks bad.
>
> Currently it’s far too easy for harried developers to point to
> jQuery’s overwhelming popularity as an excuse for avoiding the hard
> work of evaluating what may be more appropriate alternatives. In
> fact, I was ready to go down that path myself until a colleague
> persuaded me to take a closer look at Dojo. While it’s far too early
> to know whether we have made the right choice in going with Dojo, at
> least we’re giving it a try. How many developers will never even
> consider Dojo because they couldn’t easily find out why they should
> bother?
>
>
>
>
> -- View this message in context:
> http://dojo-toolkit.33424.n3.nabble.com/jQuery-and-the-long-term-viability-of-Dojo-tp3952249p3987949.html>
>

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

This post was updated on .

We (https://qbo.intuit.com) have been using Dojo for some years now and only last year there was a big discussion of dojo vs jquery since some folks (besides me and a few others) were clouded with the idea that jquery > * because everyone uses it.

In the end we still continued with dojo. With the latest AMD changes, the whole which library to use argument is also becoming less relavent than it was before. For example we use dojo as our main library and for mostly everything, but we also use highcharts which is jquery based and they all work fine with each other. We could even port over some bootstrap.js (there is a public port already available) components too if needed. And below is a snippet of trying ember.js inside our dojo infrastructure.

If we were always using jquery, we would still use dojo for things like dGrid and certain other widgets.

So why even have a jquery vs dojo argument specially when you can use both lol. All they need to be is work well as an AMD module and if they don't lets change it so that they do.

Also the dojo build system, while being a bit complicated for 1st time users, seems to work well when you need it doing everything like minification, certain level of error checking, creating your own custom js layers - to control your apps network performance etc...all this stuff doesn't come out of the box with jquery.

What I would personally want from dojo, is to get rid of FF3, SF4, IE6, IE7 and IE8 support (follow the path of jQuery 1.9 and 2.0 split - where one supports old browsers while the other is fast and lightweight without the IE mess) so that components can become a bit more light weight - use CSS3 transitions over javascript animations, use CSS positioning like fixed rather than calculating it again and again (dijit dialog). Hopefully dojo 2.0 will go this route.

Re: jQuery and the long term viability of Dojo

Priyajeet wrote

What I would personally want from dojo, is to get rid of FF3, SF4, IE6, IE7 and IE8 support (follow the path of jQuery 1.9 and 2.0 split - where one supports old browsers while the other is fast and lightweight without the IE mess) so that components can become a bit more light weight - use CSS3 transitions over javascript animations, use CSS positioning like fixed rather than calculating it again and again (dijit dialog). Hopefully dojo 2.0 will go this route.

Look at this chart. A big part of dojo is abstracting away idiosyncracies of browsers because they need to be supported. While I, too, enjoy ultra-lean code, that isn't really the place of an industrial-strength library. For one, there are fewer differences in "latest" browsers so vanilla js could often suffice. As well, if you follow the AMD approach, you can take a module, strip it down, enhance it where you need it, and plug it into your code with little additional pageweight, while getting only what you want.

Finally, the best thing to do would be intelligent building with using of the dojo/has! plugin. You can fairly easily strip IE compat stuff out of a given build and ship that to current browsers without worrying about the IE code slowing you down.

Priyajeet wrote
>
>
> What I would personally want from dojo, is to get rid of FF3, SF4, IE6,
> IE7 and IE8 support (follow the path of jQuery 1.9 and 2.0 split - where
> one supports old browsers while the other is fast and lightweight without
> the IE mess) so that components can become a bit more light weight - use
> CSS3 transitions over javascript animations, use CSS positioning like
> fixed rather than calculating it again and again (dijit dialog). Hopefully
> dojo 2.0 will go this route.
>

Look athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Desktop_Market_share_by_year_and_version
this chart . A big part of dojo is abstracting away idiosyncracies of
browsers because /they need to be supported./ While I, too, enjoy ultra-lean
code, that isn't really the place of an industrial-strength library. For
one, there are fewer differences in "latest" browsers so vanilla js could
often suffice. As well, if you follow the AMD approach, you can take a
module, strip it down, enhance it where you need it, and plug it into your
code with little additional pageweight, while getting only what you want.

Finally, the best thing to do would be intelligent building with using of
the dojo/has! plugin. You can fairly easily strip IE compat stuff out of a
given build and ship that to current browsers without worrying about the IE
code slowing you down.